Valentines Traditions

So I won't start this out as I have in the past (I hate Valentine's Day blah blah blah), but Larry and I have embraced the love part of the day now. We have decided the point shouldn't be to buy each other anything, but to spend it together. After last year's baking a cheesecake, we decided that could be our new tradition. Spend the day/night baking something new together, no phones or TV (unless it's mutually agreed upon or I'm taking pictures), and then enjoy our treat together. It's pretty fun and we've liked the outcome of the food so far. This years creations: Homemade Pizza (homemade dough and everything!).

One thing we didn't realize with this is that making everything homemade takes quite a while, we didn't end up eating until 8 PM, but the experience was really fun. Our pizzas turned out very delicious! We were going to make one big pizza and have him do half his toppings and me do half my toppings, but he wanted to do a lot more with his so we decided to just make our own.

Larry working the Kitchenaid

Me oiling the bowl for the dough

Dough needs to rise

He added tons of veggies as his toppings (onions, peppers, mushrooms, tomatoes, and pineapple - which I realize is actually a fruit) and then stuffed his crust with string cheese rolls. Needless to say his was HUGE! I just did olives on mine and then half had pepperoni so that someone could help me eat mine...even though it wasn't nearly as big as Larry's haha.

Taking a "Walking Dead" break

All toppings

Larry's topping "salad"

The biggest reason it takes so long is you have to make the dough (which we did in our newest Kitchenaid...yay for trying out new gadgets!) and then let it rise for an hour or two. We decided to give it 90 minutes and caught up on Walking Dead episodes. We split the dough up pretty evenly (Larry got more since he needed more for his crust), but it was fun to spread it out like I've seen on TV (although I definitely didn't do it in the air...I would've dropped it for sure). We I learned that you can spread the dough pretty thin, even when you think it might be too thin. I cooked it when I thought it was almost too thin and it turned out to give me a pretty thick crust, but that works for me because I like it a little more thick. Unfortunately I was way too hungry to wait until Larry's was cooked so I ate mine while his cooked and then he ate his while I sat and let mine digest a little haha.

Spreading dough

Adding cheese to his crust

I spread my own sauce haha

Before cooking (mine minus the cheese)

Before cooking (Larry's minus the cheese)

If it didn't take so long I'd say we're just making our own pizzas from now on, but it was a really fun experience and I look forward to making more when we want to and to say we know how to make pizza all on our own :)

Final product...I'm not professional

Look how thick his slices were!

Maybe one day we'll find an opportunity to make this for others...I think they were share worthy for groups.  Anyways, enjoy our pictures and hopefully you had a great day as well!